Broken Believer

Broken. Embarrassed. Alone. 

Sometimes I feel like everyone looks at me and sees this great believer. This person that everyone looks toward as a pillar of our young adult community. As this holy person. I strive to be that person. I do the work. I say the prayers. And at times in my life I’ve felt so strongly that the Lord was speaking to me great feats. Yet interiorly, right now, I feel alone. I feel dry and weary. Lifeless. I know I am loved. By so many and the Lord. Yet, I feel in the desert, walking alone. Dragging myself through each day. This week, I come back to the place of loneliness, experiencing this great high of feeling like someone finally gets or understands me, yet then they are gone. Feeling alone. Feeling like not enough. Thinking if I had maybe just changed one thing I said it would have resulted differently. Not in this pain. Anguish. Embarrassment.

I love God so much and I feel like daily I lay down my crosses to Him. I try to empty myself. But I always come back to dating. To being alone. To feeling like not a single person in this entire world really gets me. And in my head I know that’s not right. I know logically that the only person that will truly ever get me is God. That he is the only one who can fulfill me. Who can see me exactly for who I am. Who won’t hurt me. Who won’t want to change me. Who will just love me as I am. Broken and all.

And while my head knows it, my heart longs for more. My heart longs for Him and for deeper relationship, but it also longs for someone else. Deep down, the truest desire of my heart is for a spouse. So deeply I have longed for that for my entire life. As a child. As a college student. As a young adult. And so often I have felt like I have needed to be broken from that desire because I have spent my entire life making an idol of it. I sought it for SO long. Put all my time into looking for it and it broke me every time it didn’t work out.

However, since coming into my faith, I haven’t dated much. I surrendered so much to the Lord. Daily. And daily I put that in his hands. My number one battle. Over and over have I surrendered it. And I guess I thought I had worked through it. That I had gotten past it. That I had finally gotten to a place in my life where I wasn’t seeking it. That I was just content where I was. Happy with everything He was doing in my life. See, everything was going amazing in my life. The Lord was showing me blessing upon blessing. Yet I didn’t feel Him. I know He was there. I know He was surrounding me. Yet I couldn’t feel His presence.

I am trying to live blind obedience, even through this dark place. Even when I don’t feel Him. Even when this brokenness feels too hard to handle. Even when I just want to be held. When I feel like I literally can’t go through another day. That I don’t have the energy or the will. That I just am tired.

Lord, your servant is weary. I don’t feel you. I know you love me. But I don’t feel that love. I know you are the greatest part of my life. I know you are my everything. But I don’t feel you. I feel alone. I feel once again like no one gets me. Like I am moving through life without seeing anything passing by me. Just getting through days rather than living them. All while I know you’re there. But these bones are dry. This body lifeless. This heart aches. 

Lord, I surrender this to you again today. I pray for life in these dry bones. I pray and long to feel your love. I know it, I just need to feel it. I pray for rest. For re-sacrificing these idols. For understanding. And mostly for peace, knowing that I’ve given it to you. Knowing you have a plan far greater than mine. Knowing you want only what is good for me. Knowing you love me more than anything or anyone ever could. Knowing I am Yours.

As I let go of the idea of dating right now, as I re-sacrifice this idol, as I embrace this hurt and feeling of loneliness, Lord, I ask you to enter. Enter into these places of my heart. Fill in them what no person could fill, and allow me to receive it joyfully.

Today, I feel like Job. The Lord tells him of all of the great works He does throughout the whole world. The control of all the heavens, winds, fires, etc. How He humbles people when they are proud. Of the vastness of His glory. How he commands the mornings and seas. How each and everything that occurs in this world is because of Him. And He knows its plan. Not me. He says to Job, “Tell me, if you know it all.” Sometimes I tell more than listen. Sometimes I question or try to understand without actually realizing the gravity of what is happening around me.

The truth is, most of the time I will not understand. There could be a million reasons God caused that situation to happen. MAYBE IT ISN’T ABOUT ME. Maybe God used me to help another person in their story. Maybe I needed to be humbled. Maybe I needed to be retaught a lesson to appreciate the glory He does down the road. Or maybe I have just fallen and needed that hit to fall back to Him. Either way, it’s not me who can tell it, who can plan it, who can understand it. As Job says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be hindered. ‘Who is this who obscures counsel with ignorance?’ I have spoken but did not understand; things too marvelous for me, which I did not know.”

No purpose of yours can be hindered. It is yours to know, not mine. It is my job to submit. To lay down everything in front of you and leave it there. I don’t need to carry it with me. I don’t need to figure out the why. I just have to know that you have a purpose far greater than I can comprehend.

Lord, thy will be done.